Nada H.

A top Wyzant tutor, Marlene Soper, agrees to take $40.00 then, WITHOUT NOTIFICATION, charges $60.00 instead!

The Wyzant platform malfunctions severely for over an hour and Wyzant offers compensation for the first hour only. When the tutor, Marlene Soper, steals the extra $20.00, for what she estimates to be an extra 30 minutes online, Wyzant only offers me a website coupon instead and REFUSES to help with the tutor situation.

Proof conversations copied below:

1. From Skype, when technical issues were so sever that Wyzant suggested we try another platform:

ME: "I think we need to stop here and wait for wyzant to get back to me. Sooo Sorry."
MARLENE: "Yeah. I agree. I'm so sorry about this."
ME: "plz accept the 40 USD they credit to my account on their website? Or which ever u prefer"
MARLENE: "OIK. It's up to you. They gave you the credit, you might as well use it. Right."
ME: "ok, thank you. One minute, let me log on and check. Ok, it's there"

2. From our text messages when the theft took place:

ME: "Hi Marlene. I just received notification that wyzant charged me for $24 in addition to the 40 dollar credit. Have you received any notification of this?"
MARLENE: " Nada, when we met a week ago and had difficulty, we were talking for over an hour. When we met Friday we were dealing with all of this for 1.5 hours. I asked for 1.5 hours of compensation and have not and will not ask for anything for the weekend before."
ME: " I see. I thought we agreed over skype that it was only gling to be $40? I would have preferred a heads-up, Marlene. In any case, Wyzant should be responsible for the extra payment, not me. I will contact them. Thanks".
ME (later on): "Hello. Wyzant has placed a credit of $25 USD in my account. Please accept that credit for the extra half hour and refund me the original 24.02 USD. Wyzant cannot transfer the funds to me directly, only through the tutor. Thanks."

No reply.

3. Email excerpts with Wyzant since the incident:

"Thank you for reaching out to us... Please know that tutors are able to charge for the amount of time spent with their student during a lesson. Wyzant had provided you with a credit of $40 as a courtesy due to the technical issues that you had experienced with our online lesson platform in hopes that this amount... may cover the cost of time spent attempting to troubleshoot the issues... If you do not believe the length of the lesson has been incorrectly reported by Marlene, we would encourage you to speak with her directly regarding this... I want to reiterate that we are so sorry for the technical issues... With that being said, please note that there is no way for us to refund the additional $24.20 that you were charged by Marlene without explicit permission from the tutor to reduce the length of the lesson... While the $30 coupon cannot be refunded to your payment method, it will remain on your account and can be used towards any future tutoring you receive through Wyzant... ince Wyzant acts as the payment processor for tutors listed on our site, we are unable to adjust the charge of a lesson and provide a refund without the consent of the tutor that has submitted the charge. As such, we will not be able to provide any further refunds for your lesson with Marlene S... It is important to note this decision was made in accordance with our Terms of Use of our site, which all users agree to when creating a Wyzant account. Wyzant considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available to discuss this matter further.

The Story:

The lesson involved in this situation is EMPTY, for over an hour I suffered SEVERE technical issues which Wyzant could not explain. I could not even log into the classroom! In the end, they suggested I try an alternative platform until they checked their own for errors. That's when they deposited credit to compensate the first hour.

Marlene only taught a total of 15 MINUTES in that entire time, simply reviewing the previous lesson in preparation for start something new. Yet, I offered to compensate her for the time she spent online WAITING by giving her the $40.00 credit deposited in my account. She ACCEPTED it as an even compensation, after all we were both affected by this. Then charged me an extra $20.00 behind my back! From my OWN money, not from Wyzant.

So what was I left with as a student? Over an hour of time wasted, no new content, severe technical issues where Wyzant could not help, and a payment of $20.00, un-anticipated and undeserved, with no real compensation from the company behind all this!

It's funny that a top reviewed math tutor would behave this way over 20.00 dollars! I am a graduate student, so 20 USD mean something to me, especially when they're taken by force. But for someone who charges $40.00 / hr and has over 400 positive reviews? I guess they do too.

Over TEN emails were sent back and forth between me and Wyzant, their answer was always the same: We're sorry for your loss, but we can't help with the tutor or the money she took. And we can't pay you directly, only site credit. Good luck!

Since I cannot upload photos onto this review, I have copy-pasted the EXACT text messages that were exchanged between me and Marlene about money, plus excerpts from my emails with Wyzant. Please read them above and judge for yourselves!

A final note: What Marlene did was immoral, it's called STEALING, I would be careful about dealing with her. Even successful tutors get greedy. Also, Wyzant is NOT built to protect the students, it doesn't care if they're being extorted by the tutors, EVEN if their platform is to blame! I would NEVER recommend this site to anyone, their policy is unfair (there's no timer in the classroom, the tutor names the duration of the lesson as she sees fit and Wyzant has no proof how long the lesson ACTUALLY lasted), the platform is ALWAYS crashing and their customer assistance is useless. Again, PLEASE do NOT save your card or PayPal information on their site.